


Shadows lurking in your head

by Slive



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Set somewhere during S2, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-13 05:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11753463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slive/pseuds/Slive
Summary: He feels on the verge of a precipice, walking on the very thin, friable cornice that overhangs the void. But he’s not afraid of heights, and it’s not the emptiness that terrifies him.(Shiro deals with the aftermath of his captivity, and it's dark as an abyss full of shadows.)





	Shadows lurking in your head

**Author's Note:**

> For my dearest Clafoutis. ♥

He feels on the verge of a precipice, walking on the very thin, friable cornice that overhangs the void.

But he’s not afraid of heights, and it’s not the emptiness that terrifies him.

He wishes the abyss was full of nothingness, the darkness only a veil through which he can let himself fall for days on end-- even if it means breaking each of his bones when he finally shatters on the floor like glass. At least, he’d know the fall was going to kill him, he’d know what to expect even if it’s the worst. And for those minutes that stretch into eternities, he could at least be certain, and free, and maybe, maybe, at peace, too.

Sadly, the chasm is not empty, it is full-- of what, he has no idea. He can only see shadows, the shadows that lurk underneath the surface as they lurk in his head. Pitch black flashes. Shapeless contours. Murmurs that seem to whisper no words, that have no tone, but that sound like screams nonetheless. Shadows boil without respite underneath the surface, and he can’t see them, just feel the waves they throw as they bubble unabatedly in his brain.

Nightmares he doesn’t remember trigger actual nightmares he doesn’t remember either when he wakes up disorientated in his bunk. Memories escape him as if the past was a wound, gaping wide, but not deep enough to let the pus out of the skin, and it doesn’t even bleed-- in fact, nothing escapes, everything remains trapped. He’s infected with a disease he can’t name or treat. Contaminated cells hide in the marrow of his bones, metastases in the inner layers of his body. Is it poison that now runs in his veins, spreading through the far ends of him? He desperately hopes his core isn’t his heart, because if it is rotten, what remains to save?

The sensations prickle, burn. It hurts, unbearably. But what can he do except tear himself apart? Even this doesn’t work as he claws his mind and his thighs in the privacy of his room. He still doesn’t know what he has become, still can’t break through the haze, still can’t crack the secrets of his time in captivity, still can’t find what the Galra hid in his brain and body.

What has he done to survive? Whose blood does he have on his hands? He recalls the beginning of some fights, then it all goes blank. It’s as if his psyche was trying to protect him from what it knows he won’t manage to stand. But ignorance makes it worse as he’s left to imagining events so horrible his conscience can’t take them, yet sure he played a part in them. Why did he do it, then? Was it really worth it?

What has he been turned into by the experiments? Is he still himself, or have they created a monster out of his flesh and soul? They maimed him, but he thinks there’s more than his arm they chopped off. He feels missing limbs here and there, even in his mind–- only, he can’t pinpoint where.

And what did they inject? Has he become like radioactive waste, putting his friends in harm’s way just by existing in their vicinity? Is his prosthetic hand a threat? A way for Zarkon to locate them wherever they flee? Is he a spy without his consent, a danger unaware of its purpose? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.

He tries his best to keep his composure: the façade is the only part of him that’s left to control now that everything under the crust has been toyed with and dirtied. He tries his best to muffle his trauma so that nobody worries-- so that nobody doubts. He hopes their gazes can’t pierce his appearance. Behind, they wouldn’t see someone they can trust. They would see Galra stains, and the Galra Empire is the enemy. They would see the weakness of someone who gave in, who gave up, and doesn’t even remember why or how. They would see all the blocks that crumble, and you can’t lean on crushed stones.

He wears his role as the leader the way he’d wear an armour. He’s aware, though, that the plate has defects. It wouldn’t take much to rip it off of him. Yet, for now, it stays in position and he hopes, just a little, that the mask won’t slip before he helps them win-– or before he dies trying.

The daily earthquakes inside him are silent, immobile. When he cracks, it makes no noise. Maybe he doesn’t need to fall from a cliff to break, because glass doesn’t need much to be grinded to dust and he’s taken so many violent blows already. He’s been torn for so long, smashed to pieces. He’s somehow patched them together the best he could, sewed them askew with his clumsy fingers. He feels like Frankenstein’s creature, but who would Frankenstein be? The Galra witch? Or is it himself when he glues his blanks and damage together so that he can pretend, so that they can believe?

Is it worth it? Is he worth it? When he doesn’t even know who he is anymore-- maybe this monster Sendak mentioned. He wants to belong, wants to be who he hopes he still is, but Sendak sounded like he knew and Shiro doesn’t remember anything, after all.

This precipice, teeming with dark, frightening shapes is open inside him, cutting through his spirit, rooting in his heart. There is no escape from himself. He desperately wants to sink into the darkness so that he gets a closer look, so that he knows what is crawling out there, but he can’t either. He’s suspended between too much and not enough, between snippets and ignorance, and there’s nothing he can try to change.

Day after day, as he smiles and encourages and fights and laughs and orders and supports and flies, despair engulfs him, as he’s helplessly hovering above the shadows that lurk in the pit as they lurk in his head.


End file.
